Cocodorm Arouses the City's Ire

When I learned a gay porn website had set up only two blocks away from the New Times office on Biscayne Boulevard, I devised a plan to get inside the two-story red brick house where all the action at cocodorm.com takes place. I decided to apply for a job as one of the website’s models.

Unfortunately, I was not exactly the perfect candidate for Cocodorm -- and NBC 6 stole my thunder. Immediately I encountered problems with the job requirements. According to the cocodorm website, models must have one of the three following qualities: “Tight body, sexy face or big dick.” I’ve got love handles, a dour face and pack a Vienna sausage in my drawers. Needless to say, being gay or bisexual was not that important considering “straight boyz can apply but must fuck and suck dick.” Hmmm, I wondered, when my time came, would I stand up?

Alas, last week, venerable TV reporter Jeff Burnside, accompanied by a film crew and a legion of Miami code enforcers and cops, descended on the colonial style residence. Burnside’s report trumpeted Cocodorm.com as a hedonistic, unsafe sex house that threatened the fabric of a residential neighborhood, complete with shots of children playing on a street off Biscayne Boulevard where crack whores still roam the pavement for johns. Burnside also ambushed Cocodorm employees at the web-site’s offices on North Miami Avenue.

Like New Times, Burnside had received an anonymous package containing documents about Cocodorm founder Phillip Bleicher’s unceremonious departure from the Windy City early last year. Chicago’s attorney general is investigating Bleicher for allegedly pilfering hundreds of thousands of dollars from a school charity and using the money to, among other things, finance his porn empire. Bleicher was also cited by the city’s health department for allegedly using models who had tested positive for STDs. Cocodorm attorney James Benjamin denies it all. “It was all misinterpreted by Chicago officials,” Benjamin said. “My client saw no reason to fight the allegations because he was moving to Miami.”

Miami code enforcement director Mariano Loret de Mola has cited Bleicher’s company Flavaworks, which owns the Cocodorm website and the house, with running an illegal business out of a residence, an illegal boardinghouse, and an adult entertainment venue in a residential neighborhood. Benjamin claims Loret de Mola has overstepped his bounds. “None of the models are paying to live in the house and no one physically goes there to watch sex,” Benjamin says. “It is all broadcast over the Internet.” --Francisco Alvarado